Technology is an integral part of any business today, and that includes the small or medium-sized business. Managing all of your business technology can become overwhelming and quite near impossible, which is why technology as a service is a necessity for many. An effective Managed Services Provider (MSP) offers a cost-effective solution to the SMB and provides industry expertise along with 24 x 7 x 365 support, both on-site and remotely. The MSP can ensure that an organization’s IT is running at its optimal ability and safe from disaster, be it from human error, system failure or cyber attacks.

Here are a couple of scenarios that illustrate the importance of the MSP and the need for a true BDR (Backup Disaster Recovery.) When we meet with a new client, one of the first things we ask is how long their business can be down if faced with disaster. It’s not a pleasant question to ask, but it’s a necessary one. The wrong choice in backup could cause a delay of up to 4 days in retrieving your data if your server crashes or you are the victim of ransomware. To the SMB, that can cause thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Here are two recent examples of the importance of a good backup and how the MSP can be an integral part of your business success..

These two examples are from two law firms:

Law Firm I:

A successful law firm approached us to help them when their current MSP (a small 2-person business) reported that they could not recover their data when their server became infected with ransomware. One of the partners in the firm opened an attachment from a trusted source, but didn’t look closely enough to realize it was an infected email.

Before we continue, we need to address the vulnerability of choosing such a small MSP that cannot provide 24 x 7 support and a team of engineers with varying levels of expertise. Larger MSP’s recognize the need to create Service Level Agreements and detailed documentation that any one on the team can use for troubleshooting or other service issues. The client can also be sure that the level of service is consistent. We cannot stress enough the importance of choosing an MSP carefully.

So, back to Law Firm I. It had a backup solution in place, but there were two problems. 1) The backup solution was only backing up the firm’s data, and 2) it was never tested. Because the firm had terabytes of data backed up in the cloud, to download it would take days. In addition, because it did not have a virtual copy of the server running locally, the firm would also have to completely rebuild a new server once the data was recovered. Ordering and configuring a new server, downloading the data and reconnecting everyone on the network took close to a week. If the firm were to have a similar incident now, it would have a local virtualized copy of its server running in the office, along with a cloud backup. The time it would take to take it to recover would be a matter of hours versus the week it previously endured.

Law Firm II:

In contrast the challenges of the previous law firm, one of our existing law firm clients recently had a software glitch that corrupted critical data in its database. Fortunately, this firm had the right kind of backup solution in place that offered both a fully functioning replication of its server and data in its office and also a duplicate in the cloud. We were notified of the data corruption late in the evening and quickly restored the firm’s most recent backup to its local server. No data was lost, no time was lost during business hours and the firm never felt any pain associated with the software issue. For us, it was a non-event, too. As part of our service, we not only provide the right backup solution to our clients, but we also execute weekly restoration tests to ensure that when the need for a recovery happens, we are 100% confident that the fully functioning restore will work.

Hopefully, these scenarios illustrate the critical role an MSP plays in the success of an organization or business. Feel free to contact us with any questions or information you might require.